DAY 75. João de Souza Leite

Designer, professor, curator, lecturer and consultant.

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English:

João de Souza Leite is an adjunct professor of the Escola Superior de Desenho Industrial (“Superior School of Industrial Design”) / UERJ, where he is part of the Post – Graduation Program in Design, and also an adjunct professor at PUC – Rio, in the Department of Art and Design.

A designer by the Escola Superior de Desenho Industrial – at Esdi/UERJ, and a PhD in Social Sciences from the Institute of Philosophy and Humanities – at IFCH/UERJ, João started his professional life as an assistant of the designer Aloisio Magalhães, in 1966, where he developed visual identity programs as the ones of the Brazilian Jockey Club, of Rio de Janeiro, and of the Brazilian Central Bank, among others. There, he started an intense activity in editorial projects.

In 1980, he joined the revitalization team of the National Historic and Artistic Heritage Institute, where he created and coordinated the Publishing Center of the Fundação Nacional Pró-Memória (National Pro-memory Foundation), dedicated to research, publishing and exhibition projects, having taken up the issue of Revista do Patrimônio (Heritage Magazine), which was suspended for a few years.

João was the founder and co-editor of the academic journal Arcos: design, visuality and material culture (PPDEsdi), and the responsible for the edition of the magazine D2B: Design to Branding, published by GAD’ Design.

Besides all that, he is an exhibition curator, lecturer and consultant, he gives lectures and writes regularly about design. He organized the book “A herança do Olhar: o design de Aloisio Magalhães” (about Aloisio Magalhães’ design), edited in 2003, for what he was awarded with the Design prize of the Museu da Casa Brasileira (The Brazilian House Museum) the following year. Still in 2003, another work of his, Design: entre a gramática e o saber (Design: between the grammar and the knowledge), received the same award.

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What is your impression about a brand called Brazil?

In this assessment of what can be a “Brand Brazil”, two dimensions arise quickly.

The brand, as a designed symbol, issued with a specific purpose, and the brand as a characteristic trait, ingrained in certain ways of being and acting of the Brazilian.

In the first dimension, the role of an image purposely issued is aligned with the aim of promoting greater movement of people throughout the country, so that the funds can be earned, directly and indirectly, primarily by strengthening the tourism sector. In this dimension, it is essential that the “brand Brazil” is compatible with some manifestations of the real. And so it is, using the affability, the easy display of affection, a certain joy and informality, and why don’t we say, the swing of the Brazilian. It is also in this dimension that several clichés about us are positively manifested, sometimes in an atmosphere of exaltation.

This concept of brand covers the time since the graphic signs of 1960s organized in visual identity systems for large corporations until the ways of making tangible those peculiar and informal aspects nowadays, through the activity of marketing and design. And it is reasonably welcome for dealing with important aspects of promoting the country as an important player in the international game of culture.

I say reasonably for a simple reason. I will explain.

As a critical observer of the movements of our culture and our economy, I personally do not situate myself in the patriotic wave that seems to pervade many of the organizers of this first approach.

Regardless of how much I understand that the service sector can be benefited with the impact of this larger movement of people in search of these demonstrations of paradise fragments; regardless of how much I understand as really significant the promotion of the “brand Brazil” as an exaltation to the Brazilian informality, to the affection, and to our supposed creativity, I believe we are still limping in our civilizing process.

And then, the second dimension of the “brand Brazil” is revealed.

I refer especially to the reverse of those ideas that, lately, started to celebrate the “gambiarra” (“quick fix”) and the improvisation as elements of our creative being. It seems to me there is a reasonable mistake in this approach.

We suffer, collectively, for the lack of a projective approximation to the facts of the world. We are characteristically improvisers, improvident par excellence. To these data, observable each day in the news, we can add the accentuated social disparities and the lack of fairness of Justice. There is no “brand Brazil” that can overlap to such aspects so constitutive our multiple and fractional social identity.

A serious inattention to rational aspects involving the project of the future, any future, rages our society.

Since the hindsight characteristic of entrepreneurs who, like heroes, launch themselves to the market confident in their own boots, but without any given more realistic about its behavior, resulting in the sad statistics about the short life of most projects in Brazil, which do not survive to their first crisis.

Since the lack of assessment about the impacts that different actions may generate in the urban systems, proven in poorly designed plans, left for a later correction. Since the precarious ordering of management actions for public services and a large part of which refers to the collective usufruct. This difficulty in dealing with the idea of the project indicates that we are late for the present, barely planning actions that may meet immediate needs, and perhaps for an immediate future.

For more complex that the human activity is, and, above all, the design of our cities and of the urban life, there is no reason to believe that any propositional process of improvements for a better welfare should be conducted primarily through trial-and-error tests. This is the actual child and adolescent attitude that, in a country that tries to get closer to maturity, should be moved from the spotlight.

I believe that is no longer suitable to be content with the superficial view of creativity and affectivity that characterize us so much. For more that these two facets of the emotional character of our identity values ​​provide certain well being among people, it does not solve or attack frontally the most essential problems to the country’s development- the problems of housing, the problems of coexistence, of transportation, of health, of education, of sanitation, of infrastructure for production, among many other factors that demand, more than ever, consistent and consequent actions by the whole society.

This, the second, to be reversed, dimension of the “brand Brazil”. Like another side of the coin.

The project idea is given of an elaborate culture. It is given of a rationality placed in the service of social collectives and of the individual intentions.

By the use of all technologies currently available, exalt the project as an indicator of civilization means to advance over time, modeling possible solutions, that enable testing and evaluation of impacts and of future lateral and unforeseen facts. Elaborate rationally the creativity would mean, in our terms, to avail ourselves of our much celebrated creative potential to incorporate it in more consistent diagnostic and evaluation procedures, transforming this country, effectively, into a built environment with characteristics that can optimize the living with the fantastic nature that surrounds us, in the perspective of a growing number of agents involved, herding large numbers of people.

Personally, I would like to attend and participate in a wide effort that would effectively transform our culture: our habits and customs being permeated by the notion that autonomy depends radically of information, rationality and purposeful action. This, in all planes and levels of social life. This way, perhaps, we could promote with more integrity, a “brand Brazil” which the vast majority can be proud of.